


Tall star tales and puppy dogs' tails....

by YawningOverTheTapestries



Category: British Comedy - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, I Blame Tumblr, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Morning After, This was a good idea at the time, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, night before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 10:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YawningOverTheTapestries/pseuds/YawningOverTheTapestries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian and Jonathan share notes on wonderful things in the universe over a few drinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tall star tales and puppy dogs' tails....

"Does the universe still give you headaches?" Brian's voice was soft and melodic over the quiet.  
"Sometimes, yeah.... the big numbers, Brian. I can't get my head round them. Everything else, the stars and planets and stuff, all amazing.... but I'm happy to leave the big stuff to you. I bought all the books and I'm slowly working through them." Jonathan, slumping over the bar and emptying his glass in one gulp, knew how unimpressive that sounded, but wasn't going to care too much, given their situation.  
"That's alright, that's why the books are there. They give everyone a more detailed explanation of the science, which is nice, it allows us to keep the shows looking the way they do." Brian gave a quiet smile, which was all he could manage at the moment. He knew it wouldn't be too far a stretch for his imagination - the next morning he'd probably be reminiscing about that delightful spin in the centrifuge. Everyone saw it. And his head already was feeling a few kilograms too heavy.

Lit by dozens of bright stars and the full moon pouring silvery light through the wide windows, time felt like it had slowed right down. The two of them hadn't noticed the night fly past; the long charity evening, the stage, the hot lights, the free drinks, all felt a few millennia ago now, here in the lounge above the theatre. But at least the swanky room was mellow and quiet, with just a few equally worn out people in it with them, and the bar provided a nice cool surface to slump on.  
Once Brian had taken stock of the situation, however, he couldn't help noticing the clock on the opposite wall bearing 02:55am, which did not exactly help lighten his mood. It had bothered him for a long time, since his Horizon days. The somewhat annoying idea of having to know what the time was all day. That was beside the point, though. Time changed every second and never stood still for a moment; that was how it worked. Getting worked up over a day that flies by didn't seem worth it - time waits for nobody, not even a physicist.

"Brian.... why is it so hard to understand?" Poking into Brian's train of thought, Jonathan sounded almost meek; Brian evoked all kinds of scary, strange and amazing science questions whenever they had met, and Jonathan was always a little wary of how hard to understand the answers might be. And he was pretty sure anyone who'd ever been lucky enough to see or meet Brian would feel exactly the same way.  
"I don't know. It just is.... that's what science is. Everything we know about the universe. We add to what we know all the time, by doing research, and learning new things.... we get taken into new directions and it does get confusing.... " Brian was sporting his trademark wistful, deep expression, his brown eyes heavy with thought and his voice drifting. The shadows of the room accented the subtle thoughtfulness carved into his face.  
"But every now and then we discover something really spectacular, which changes the world and makes our lives better, and we get a glimpse of how amazing this science lark is, don't we?"  
Brian sighed, and gave a smile. "Exactly."

Jonathan, almost without thinking, poured himself another drink. "Y'know, I think we need more people like you. People who are professional scientists, so they know what they're talking about, but can also show to everyone how beautiful and inspiring science is. And you do it so well."  
Brian blushed slightly. "Well.... "  
"You do, Brian. Your shows were watched by, what, millions of people. There are people everywhere who know who you are and what you do and admire you for it. You're a great inspiration - "  
"Very kind, I'm sure."

"What was it like, filming the Wonders series?"  
"Oh, it was a lot of fun. Of course, we did have work to do, but we loved going to these exotic places all over the world. It's a wonderful thing to get to be able to do, but difficult as well - we did have to keep in mind the things the viewers would want to see - "  
"Mountains. Lots of mountains." Jonathan was quick to point out.  
Brian laughed, before continuing. "Yes, well, there was a thing for Wonders of the Universe we planned to film, in Bolivia, at 5,500 feet - we all got altitude sickness and had to scrap that idea. That series was harder to make than Wonders of the Solar System, logistically."  
"What about Wonders of Life?"  
Brian thought for a moment about that. "I enjoyed doing Wonders of Life, mostly because most of that series' content I was learning as we were going along.... and learning to get used to little kangaroos all over the place."  
Jonathan was laughing, but Brian wasn't. "Seriously - when we were filming in Australia there are kangaroos, they're crossing the road, they hop past houses, they're everywhere. Like squirrels are in the UK. It's something you have to get used to."  
" 'Cause they're so weird, aren't they?"  
"They are extraordinary. The way they hop, and reproduce, and everything else about them, they are quite remarkable. It's easy to see why you'll never see any other large hopping animals anywhere else."

The night slowly wheeled along, and the boys, both in a lighter mood, but wanting nothing more than to go back to the hotel, or back home, and go to bed, sat with their eyes to the window for a while.  
The moon and stars blazed above them with extraordinary clarity, and for a long time they surveyed the dazzling sky in silence, but before long Jonathan started asking wide-eyed questions; was that one the Pole Star, which planet was which, and so on. Brian had no problem with giving him a tour of the constellations, it helped clear his head at the same time.

Within about ten minutes Brian was tracing out Pegasus and the great letter W of Cassiopeia, describing them in his characteristic soft poetic fashion, to Jonathan, who was staring intently and trying valiantly to understand what he was talking about; Brian continued on unperturbed.  
" .... and you probably can't quite see it from here, it's very faint, if we were outside and away from the city, I think we could see it better.... it's right next to Cassiopeia, and it's not a star in our galaxy. It's another galaxy altogether, it's the Andromeda galaxy, which is one of the most distant objects in the sky visible to the naked eye,"  
"Wow," was Jonathan's quiet response.  
"And what we can see is what it looked like two and a half million years ago; at that time humans hadn't evolved. Homo habilis, our distant ancestor, was roaming the grasslands in Tanzania. It took the light from Andromeda that long to reach Earth - it's fifteen million million million miles away from Earth."  
After a moment of dazzled silence, Jonathan, almost by accident, replied to Brian with "Headache,"  
Brian gave a soft chuckle, and found himself remembering that irrepressible but very funny interview on Jonathan's show, and laughing a little more at that infamous remark on "the death machine."  
Oddly enough, it was beyond a joke. Huge numbers of people had great questions on physics and astronomy to ask, and answering them, even the most spectacularly insane, was nothing if not a bit entertaining.

**Author's Note:**

> That's what these boys are made of.
> 
>  
> 
> This is my first fanfic, I'm new to the Dark Side. Please be nice with your comments.


End file.
